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POLITICAL NOTES: Barnes, Deal like water but are serving the voters firewater

Roy Barnes was asked at a recent candidates forum to talk about his positions on water.

"I like water," the Democratic candidate for governor began, eliciting laughter from his audience.

The former governor went on to recycle the talking points he's recycled dozens of times before.

He touched on conservation, reservoirs, fixing leaks, water basins and negotiating with states battling Georgia over supplies.

When it was his turn, former congressman Nathan Deal, the Republican candidate, said pretty much the same.

Indeed, the two candidates aren't that far apart on the water issue, or transportation, or - when you strip away the rhetoric - some other matters.

That may be one reason why issues, in the traditional sense, have remained in the background of this campaign.

Another is that the state's financial crunch makes it hard to credibly launch bold new programs that call for big spending.

Of course, there are some exceptions.

Barnes has made $2 billion-plus in promises on education and other programs and has no plausible explanation of where the money is coming from.

And Deal has almost as much in annual tax cuts without spelling out matching spending cuts.

But one suspects that few are paying much attention.

That includes reporters - such as me - who have a tropism for attack-counterattack stories. It's lots easier to sell editors on them than some thumb sucker on the intricacies of divvying up the process of a regional penny sales tax for infrastructure. I hate that word - don't you?

But even if we sold our editors such thumb suckers - and if they bought them - that might not change the dynamics of this campaign for governor.

As I've written here before, those dynamics almost always require a strategy of attack and counterattack.

Consider the scenario.

Both candidates have a decades-long political history riddled with hard choices and plenty for second-guessers to second guess.

Deal begins with a lead in a GOP-leaning state and in a GOP leaning year, but is dogged by ethics allegations. And - more recently - personal and family financial woes.

Unless Barnes, who, after all, was fired by the voters eight years ago, exploits such potential weakness, he loses.

So none of this sets the stage for a polite discussion about the technical aspects of inter-basin water transfers.

Instead, we have - on TV, radio, online and in our snail-mail boxes - repetitive variations on a couple of themes.

Barnes: You're a crook and a deadbeat who will bankrupt the state just like you did yourself.

Deal: You're an ambulance-chasing, business-killing trial lawyer in cahoots with that socialist in the White House.

So it goes as they try to render each other unelectable.

Except in rare cases of overkill, negative attacks work because people remember them.

Lots better than someone's nine-point program for restoring the Casawassee River Basin.

And such attacks tend to crowd out issues that might otherwise be memorable.

And matter a lot more to the state's future, which is to say yours.

Yes, Barnes and Deal both do like water.

But they know that it's firewater that drives voters to the polls. And - little do they seem to know or much care - drive some of us up the walls.

MARINE CORPS BASE CAMP BUTLER, Okinawa, Japan — Marine Corps Captain James E. Frederick, who ejected from a Marine F/A-18 on Dec. 7, was pronounced dead after his body was found during search and rescue operations.